Jennifer Stromer-Galley said nobody can explain business mogul Donald Trump’s popularity right now, but it may be possible in another year.

Stromer-Galley, an associate professor in Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies and director for the Center for Computational and Data Sciences, is involved in a project to collect data from the social media presence of each candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

She said she hopes the data she’s collecting will provide clues as to why Trump has gained so much popularity in the polls.

On Wednesday, Stromer-Galley gave a presentation in Dineen Hall to kick off the 2016 Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media (IJPM) Law, Politics & the Media Speaker Series. Her talk focused on how presidential campaigns have adopted digital technologies and adapted to them strategically over four election cycles.

The first example she gave was about the iconic 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which was the first televised presidential debate.

“If you listened to the debate, you’d pick Nixon, but if you watched the debate, you’d pick Kennedy,” she said.

After that debate, researchers started to look into how powerful television could be in constructing and conveying images, and in creating a persona which could convince voters to support candidates, Stromer-Galley said.

“This debate tells a lot of stories, but the most important one, for researchers, was the realization of the power of television,” Stromer-Galley added.

After television, the Internet was introduced to the election cycle in 1996.

“Bob Dole/Jack Kemp was the first presidential campaign to use the World Wide Web,” Stromer-Galley said, “and yes, the website is still in operation.”

It was indeed a big step for presidential candidates to use the Internet to promote their campaigns, but they didn’t understand it could do much more, she said.

“Dole’s site and (1996 presidential incumbent Bill) Clinton’s site did not have email addresses, so voters could not email the candidates,” Stromer-Galley said. “As a result, their websites were still one-way communication tools.”

In 2000, candidates were really starting to experiment with interactivity, she said. John McCain’s campaign in 2000 is a perfect example of a presidential campaign adapting to digital media strategically, she added.

“After winning New Hampshire, there was a splash page on McCain’s website that asked visitors to donate in order to keep the campaign alive,” Stromer-Galley said.

She added that the splash page helped McCain raise more than $500,000, all from small donors, which was “unbelievable at that time.”

President Barack Obama’s campaign harnessed the power of simplicity, Stromer-Galley said. Instead of overwhelming readers with tons of information, his website created a clear message for a call-to-action, she added.

The Obama Dashboard is an example of how to organize supporters and transform them into more votes, she said. The Dashboard allows people to create teams, schedule events or look for events and also create online groups, where supporters can chat with each other, she added.

Stromer-Galley said this platform helped the Obama campaign effectively organize manpower.

“The key in the networked era is interactivity, which is the ability of not just to receive information, like in the broadcast era, but also to become producers, reactors and amplifiers of the information we receive,” Stromer-Galley said.

Published on February 17, 2016 at 10:59 pm

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